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16 W. Jurist 451 (1882)
Notes of Cases

handle is hein.journals/westj16 and id is 397 raw text is: NOTES OF CASES. THE very limit of the power of courts to interfere in the conduct of a pub- lic corporation for the protection of the people would seem to have been reached in a case decided in the U. S. Circuit Court, Northern District of Ohio, by Judge Baxter, and reported in 14 Chi. L. N., 369, but the title of which is not given. The plaintiffs were engaged in mining coal near defendant's road and were dependent upon such road for transportation. Their complaint was, that the defendant discriminated against them, and in favor of their competitors in business, in the rates charged for carrying coal from Salineville to Cleveland, which averment of the complaint was denied by the defendant. Upon the trial it appeared in evidence that the defendant's regular price for carrying coal between the points mentioned, in 1876, whs one dollar and sixty cents per ton, with a rebate of from thirty to seventy cents per ton to all persons or companies shipping five thousand tons or more during the year-the amount of rebate being graduated by the quantity of freight furnished by each ship- per. Under the schedule the plaintiffs were required to pay higher rates on the coal shipped by them than were exacted from other and rival parties who shipped larger quantities. The court instructed the jury that the discrimina- tion complained of and proved, as above stated, was contrary to law and a wrong to the plaintiff, for which they were entitled to recover the damages re- sulting to them therefrom, to-wit: The amount paid by the plaintiffs to the de- fendant for the transportation of their coal from Salineville to Cleveland (with interest thereon), in excess of the rates accorded by defendant to their most fa- vored competitors. The jury under these instructions, found for the plaintiffs, and assessed their damages at four thousand five hundred and eighty-five dol- lars. The defendant thereupon moved for a new trial, on the ground that the instructions were erroneous, which motion was overruled. The court say: The case of Nicholson v. G. W. R'y Co., 4 C. B. (N. S.), 366, is in its facts more nearly like the case under consideration than any other case that we have been able to find. This was an application under the railway and traffic act for an injunction to restrain the railway company from giving lower rates to the Ruabon Coal Company than were given to the complainant in that case in the shipment of coal, in which it appeared that there was a contract between the railroad company and the Ruabon Coal Company, whereby the coal com- pany undertook to ship, for a period of ten years, as much coal for a distance of at least one hundred miles over defendant's road as would produce an an- nual gross revenue of £40,000 to the railroad coin pany, in fully loaded trains, at the rate of seven trains per week. In passing on these facts the court said that in corlsidering the question of undue preference, the fair interest of the railroad company ought to be taken into the account; that the preference or

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